Mulled Marc

I don’t always agree with Roland Martin, but I frequently do and in those instance he’s generally not “got the right idea”, he’s generally dead on. He has a on CNN.com discussing the value and importance of father’s in society that’s worth a read. In part:

CNN.com has an article detailing a growing movement in state legislatures to reclaim power from the federal government. None of these measure have yet passed and become law, but with rhetoric being thrown around like “”immoral and unconscionable” and expressing the need to “salvage freedom and protect sovereignty” how long before someone introduces a bill to secede?

In the modern era where we’ve allowed the federal government to grow so far beyond it’s original place, could a state even entertain the notion of secession from the Union? The federal government now takes money directly from citizens of all states and graciously grants some of that back to state governments. How quickly could a state begin intercepting payroll taxes so that money goes where it belongs and the state could start using it to replace federal services?

How closely did President Obama want to be compared to Lincoln?

Update:
Apparently if/when Texas secedes, Chuck Norris may run for president.

A Federal Court judge has ruled that an online website may be sued under the Americans with Disabilities Act if their website is not accessible by the blind. The ruling stems from a suit against Target by the National Federation of the Blind (NFB). The class action lawsuit charged that Target’s online site was missing features that would allow a blind person to use the site and that a purchase could not be made online without the help of a sighted person. The NFB has stated that they previously contacted Target to resolve the issues with their website, but that negotiations broke down, leading to the suit.

In what could be great for ratings, but will inevitably be very bad publicity CBS has announced that the next survivor will feature the following tribe designations: African-American, Asian-American, Caucasian, Hispanic. The four tribe will start the game separated by race then the normal game play and tribe shake-ups will occur. As quoted by Zap2It.com, Jeff Probst’s take on it is this:

“I think at first glance, when you just hear about it, it could sound like a stunt, especially with the way reality [TV] has gone,” “Survivor” host Jeff Probst told Smith. “But that’s not what we’re doing here. The idea for this actually came from the criticism that ‘Survivor’ is not ethnically diverse enough. … We said, ‘Let’s turn that criticism into creative for the show, and I think it fits in perfectly with what ‘Survivor’ does. It’s a social experiment, and this adds another layer to the experiment.”

Heard on The Rush Limbaugh Show
CBS’ Survivor page

The CEA has responded to the entertainment industry’s attempts to eliminate them by alienating their customers with an ad in Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper. The ad highlights some of the notable attempts to cry wolf in the past, none of which reigned destruction on the planet as predicted.

via BoingBoing

The IPac Blog has noted that “Friends of John Kerry” has return the donated iPod that IPac sent to all senators. Senator Kerry becomes the second Senator who’s fund raisers refused the digital music device after Conrad Burns’ was returned earlier in the week. Must be the millions of dollars that Hollywood and the record labels donate to campaigns is just too important to risk enjoying their product. Or, being optimistic, maybe when you buy your politician you equip them with all the cool gadgets, so they just didn’t need the iPod.

From the IPac Blog (Who is IPac?)

This is a concerted effort to escalate Hollywood’s war on America by creating a generation of criminals and sending them off to jail. That’s right: the “Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2006″ (IPPA) would double the authorized prison terms for existing copyright infringement, create a host of new offenses, and establish a division within the FBI to hunt down infringers. The Members of Congress in the pockets of the Hollywood cartels want to divert $20 million a year and FBI agents from fighting real criminals so they can go after people without computers.

In case you haven’t seen the early reports about this bill it’s basically DMCA 2.0. Rather than realize that the DMCA was flawed and far over-reaching, Congress is looking to make it even worse. The kicker for me is that they want the taxpayers (who fund the FBI) to enforce private copyright. The US government has gotten way too large if they have time to fight three wars (Afghanistan, Iraq, and Terrorism), and still act as Big Brother for Hollywood and the Recording Industry.

Whether you agree with the Bush administration’s hard-line when it come to foreign policy or not, this article from the The Christian Science Monitor is a good analysis of why he acts the way he does.

Yet it also seems clear that this administration – galvanized by 9/11 – sees Iran’s words, too, as more than rhetoric, and sees itself as the only nation willing and able to take action.

Read the full article here.

Didn’t NBC already get their hand slapped once for….helping along…news stories?

Here’s a story that NBC is hiring Muslim men, who actually “look Muslim”, to create a news story about discrimination. With a completely open mind I’m sure, NBC is targeting NASCAR races along with other sporting events. According to reports they plan send these actors to various events and record the inevitable racism that ensues. Again, I’m sure that NBC has made no judgements about the NASCAR fans, because the irony of that would just be too incredible.

From the AP story

The NBC crew was “apparently on site in Martinsville, Va., walked around and no one bothered them,” NASCAR spokesman Ramsey Poston said Wednesday.

According to a follow-up e-mail NBC will try again this weekend at the race in Texas. Some have theorized that NBC is hoping that the large, sometimes rowdy, infield area will be easier to instigate.
Michelle Malkin 1
Michelle Malkin 2
Michael Barone
AP Story on Yahoo

Apple has announced the beta of their Boot Camp product for Mac OS X which will allow you to dual-boot with Windows without any hacking. Boot Camp will help you burn a CD with all of the drivers needed to run Windows XP and will setup a dual-boot menu that can be accessed with the option key during boot. You will, of course, have to provide your own copy of Windows XP (“No multi-disc, upgrade or Media Center versions”), but Mr. Jobs seems to be making the rest as easy as possible.

Could this be more evidence that John C. Dvorak was right about Apple eventually adopting Windows?

via Engadget